It was a really nice event, and it was funny to put a face on the nicknames. Big thanks to Nadeo for the invitation Plus, i won the contest : i did not expect that (i thought i was for Mrmim) so it was awesome. And on the replay i see that my oral english is not the best i've seen...

During the French (and maybe USA stream) we had announced the top 3 winners of each contest and also had interviewed some contest winners at the Paris LANniversary.
We are going to write a news to announce the results of the three contests this week as well

I had the chance to vote for choosing the three winners of the Tracks contest and I can tell you that the results were very close, but not as close as for the Startrack contest

A: Now there is the interview of Mr. Florent "Hylis" Castelnérac, president of Nadeo, and Mr. Yves Guillemot, president of Ubisoft.
Let's start with you, Mr. Guillemot.

A: What has motivated Ubisoft to approach TrackMania?

YG: Well, we always have been excited of the success that TrackMania had, and when we saw Florent successfully enlarging his brand step by step, improving the game with the help of the players,
we found this experience very fantastic.
This is why we approached Florent to see if we could do something together with him.

A: Which place does TrackMania now have in the Ubisoft universe?

YG: TrackMania is very often in advance of what we will realize in the future.
TrackMania is of course E-Sport, but it is also the creation of contents and contests by the players, a whole bunch of activities, which we also would like to have for our other games.
We already started this with Ghost Recon Online, with Duel of Champions, which is also doing well in this domain.
We will also continue with games for consoles where we will introduce more and more E-Sport and contents created by the players.

A: This means we will soon see more E-Sport in the universe of Ubisoft?

YG: Yes, much more E-Sport, much more participation of players in the activities in the games, created by our game designers.

A: Ok, thank you! We will quickly head over to Hylis.
Hylis, today we have 10 years Trackmania, how did all this start, what was the idea that started TrackMania?

FC: It is a line of thoughts behind TrackMania. We did not have many possibilities to create anything, therefore the gang of engineers, like some would say, created more and more tools to create things the fastest possible, and in the end we found that those tools were the funniest things we had created, then we decided to combine them and thin them out in some way.

A: So this launched TrackMania Original, I have seen the red boxes over there, that some players might take as souvenirs, we will perhaps show them on the stream.
I saw those red boxes, this started the game, it is really a myth.
We have 10 years now with Original, United, Canyon and Valley, and the next 10 years, or what will the next year bring to TrackMania, what can we expect?

FC: I will avoid to make plans for the next 10 years. It might be to much. [laughing]
The dynamism we have actually, the current phase, I don't know if I should it call it like this, but I'd like to name the next extension "Power Up", it might sound strange, "Power Up 2", because it is the maturity of the ManiaPlanet platform, it is a very ambitious platform in terms of creations by the players. Here we can see there are more and more titles.
We are reaching maturity on the titles, demos, audience. The lobby we did very nice in United, we will create a even better lobby. We have done a lobby 2.0, but it takes long to create all the tools, and we only now start to tame the biest.
I think the next update, well, TrackMania² is a evolving title, it is not that we release it and it is finished. We are releasing it step by step in different environments, and we are reaching a certain degree of maturity now. 2014 we will start with this, and then we will realize lot of stuff, of which I can't talk now [laughing]

A: Too bad, we will not get exclusive news here.

FC: I have to talk to Yves before. [laughing]

A: We saw TrackMania again at the ESWC this year, it is one of the games, I think it is the most enduring game at the ESWC, which even has a record of persistence for such a game.
How would you explain that TrackMania is this successfull in such events?
It will still be popular, because there are always lots of people watching the races.
How do you explain this?

FC: There are various reasons. It is clear that my meeting with Matthieu Dallon in 2005 or rather 2004 is responsible for this, because we conceived a game together with the ESWC for the event in 2006.
He brought many thoughts to this, also I did, and many others, we thought of creating a game for the E-Sports, for stability and history.
If a player like Carl can participate in the "Mythical Race" today, is because the gameplay is the same as on the 27 January 2006. This stabilty is very important for the E-Sports, so there can be tales, and so the champions can talk of it, that others can beat them, that they can come back, etc.
In our culture, in sports, young people succeed to older players, and so on, it is a story, but it is a story that has to be told with the time, so it also takes time to tell this story, and we created a game so this story can be told.
Then, TrackMania has ups and downs, either because there is big concurrence like from League of Legends that is actually on top, but which is also pulling the E-Sports from top.
And in order to have more and more TrackMania, which also was on the WCG, and on many different events, we exactly have to go towards more and more E-Sports, so the society understands this significance, the meaning of the E-Sports, which they will find in the races, because races are the major event of Sports, so races can become also the major events of E-Sports.
Inside Nadeo, we have a saying when we are thinking to much of something, it is Manchester United, we are planing Manchester United while we are still at the level of neigborhood competitions.
TrackMania was concieved for something big, how it is conceived for the E-Sport, how stable it is, I think this makes it longevity, players want to believe into this.
It was not that much conceived for entertainment, like a League of Legends where one watches the game more than the players.
It has a great accessiblity, you put people in a room, they look and discover there is a French who is winning and then it starts.
This game has its qualities, this is what makes it enduring, despite the fact that races are not the main events in E-Sports as of today.

A: So this is something that might get bigger, we will have many events in the future, we will still have TrackMania in E-Sports the next years. It is a important part for TrackMania after all.
Now I'd like to finish this interview with a summary, if you could summarize TrackMania in one word. If you had one word to outline TrackMania, which would you chose?

FC: The players

A: The community, perhaps? Mr. Guillemot?

YG: Yes, you just took the word Community. It is indeed the whole energy of the players, who are actually creating this dynamism.

A: Well we can see it today since Nadeo has invited many players who have created contents in the past 10 years, who have participated in E-Sports events. I'm agreeing with you on this.
It is true that the community is creating TrackMania nowadays, also ShootMania, but we are here for TrackMania today.
Thank you very much, I let you enjoy the evening just over there.

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Unfortunately, I couldn't be in the heartland of TrackMania (but still hope to get there someday for a visit!)
I watched your streams and it looked like a wonderful time. Thank you so much for sharing.

We here in North America had ourselves a good time too... we actually celebrated on two different occasions because the Friday Night Gamers couldn't guarantee attendance and have our party on 14 Dec like everyone else. So we cheated and partied earlier on 22 November!

We tried to highlight as many cool aspects of the game as we could, like custom skins (including the 10th Anniversary skins), mods, the epic TrackMania RPG title pack, the 10th Anniversary maps (finalists), etc.

I would like to thank everyone that did anything to help pull these parties off. It was a big deal and there was a lot of work by A LOT of TrackManiacs to make it an epic set of parties around the globe. And thanks for letting Team FNG be a part of it!

I also appreciate TrackManiacs from around the world that attended our parties as well as your own in locales other than North America. It was fun to see you jumping parties.

One major thing missing was my good friend eyebo ... it wasn't the same without him, but I'd like to give a special shout out to him for all he's done over the last several years for the community too.

Our tournament was a blast... we pulled off a multi-server/every TM environment tournament and was able to successfully keep a running score across all maps/servers. It was a blast! That is, except for my colossal fail in mistaking "WLV.ES Minato" for a girl and causing SiREN and Johkr to do the same until around 1:03:10 on the stream when we get corrected as we're beginning the "Etherlight" Island map.

I hope you enjoy our streams, as well as some photos from our party on 22 November below.
Thanks again to everyone! TrackMania has been a huge part of the Friday Night Gamers since 2006 and we look forward to another 10 years of TrackMania goodness. Love to Nadeo, Ubisoft and the entire TrackMania Community!

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